Review: THE PENELOPIAD at The Little Theatre, University Of Adelaide

Reviewed by Ewart Shaw, Wednesday 28th May 2025.

The Penelopiad was heralded appropriately by the song of sirens and the flashing red and blue lights of the fire engines.  The false alarm was professionally managed, but how would the cast, in the dressing room below the stage, have felt? Had I stayed for the subsequent Q and A, I might have found out. As it was, the University of Adelaide Theatre Guild performance was delayed for only a few minutes. It is a fascinating, and I might have said well-executed work, though in the light of the subject matter, it might not be entirely appropriate.

It is a poignant moment in that great epic, The Odyssey.

Margaret Atwood has looked at the story, not of the hero, but of his patient wife Penelope, who must fend off the advances of a squadron of suitors, busily eating her out of palace and home, seducing the maids, and depleting the royal exchequer. The action takes place not in Ithaca but in the underworld, amid the fields of asphodel. Penelope narrates, and purple-clad Jane Ford brings articulate dignity to the role, moving graciously from observer to participant. She is barely absent from your sight and your thoughts. She is aided by Eurycleia, Ulysses’ wet-nurse. Olivia Jane Parker is memorable in the part, and drops her head scarf to become just a member of the chorus. Her role is complex. She knows that Penelope has enlisted the maids to spy on the men. Penelope has encouraged them to speak unkindly of her in the men’s presence. Yet Euricleia, knowing this, is instrumental in their execution, which is the chilling end to the play.

Kristin Telfer has worked with intelligence and imagination, developing her thoughts with her cast and their ideas. She says, in her director’s note, that she had been thrilled by Atwood’s narrative and was overjoyed to discover the author’s theatrical adaptation. She has been well aided by Shannon Norfolk’s design. The royal characters are richly coloured. White masks, inspired by classical tradition, hang on the back wall of the set. Each maid puts on her mask and becomes a man, brutal and demanding. The fight choreography by Jethro Pidd is strongly carried out.

The creation of the shroud for King Laertes, Penelope’s stratagem to delay choosing a husband, is woven carefully into the set and the action. The white ropes unrolled from the balcony are the warp, and translucent ribbons become the weft. There cannot be another company in Adelaide that could assemble the resources for this performance. Not the set, minimal, or the costumes, simple white tunics, but twelve women, confident in unison and confident in each of the roles they are called upon to play. The choral speaking is clear, and the choral singing of Kristin Stefanoff’s music is itself a rare delight, moving. Their confident unity is special, as they take on different characters, sometime just for a word or two, but there’s a polished cameo from Jessica Merrick as Helen, elegantly draped and bitchily dismissive.

 There are two male characters. Frederick Pincombe, himself a Classics scholar, is a petulant and slightly built Telemachus who, despite references to him being just a boy, must at least be 21. Theo Papazis is Odysseus, not, and this is how Penelope recalls him, not the heroic warrior, best known for cunning, but a weary traveller, who will, as the story unfolds, continue his journey after death.

The story of Ulysses/Odysseus’ return from Troy is well known in classical circles. It has inspired such masterpieces as Il ritorno d’Ulysses in patria, by Monteverdi, and a parody by Sir Terry Pratchett, in which the Ulysses character remarks that it’s only a few hundred miles from Troy to Ithaca and he should be home in a week or so. We know better. The mime of his epic journey, blinding giants, having sex with nymphs, is played out wittily on the balcony.

The grapevine, that source of theatrical intelligence, gossip, must have been rustling loudly. The first performances were booked out, as are several subsequent ones. Get in quick. Let Hermes lend his wings.

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